Four years ago an unholy alliance of St Nicholas Hospital, a Christian alms house in Salisbury, and the Earl of Radnor’s Longford estate just outside the city announced plans to build 100 houses on a meadow beside a canalised branch of the River Avon. According to the Environment Agency’s flood map of Salisbury, the meadow does not flood.

The Salisbury Journal columnist Annie Riddle gamely published a photograph of the meadow. It showed a lake. The Barbour’d masses revolted. The planning application was withdrawn, although the thwarted developers’ PR operative, a delusionist with a promising political future, continued to insist that there was no flood. Under the new zoning system, another splendid gift from the impressive Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, he would get his way without a fight.

Such events are doubtless a British norm. There is an increased awareness that the back yard in Nimby is not mine alone. The more land that is sacrificed to infrastructural monoliths, to buildings, to aggregates, to tarmac and concrete, the more pervious will these watery isles become to floods, bursting dams and associated disasters, unnatural disasters, micro-Anthropocene disasters. The back yard with cars in trees, collapsed bridges, floating furniture and societal chaos belongs to everyone. It’s ours. Just as local knowledge is ours — not that it counts for anything.

The peculiarities of places are to be obliterated by startlingly crude standardised criteria devised by infantile vandals in their think tank sandpit. A levelling is to be applied with disregard for specifics. This is not merely political swinishness. It is an aesthetic crime. The absolute disregard for genius loci is a triumph of philistine stupidity.

If, the “thinking” goes, it’s good for a Cumbrian fell, then it’s obviously good for a Cambridgeshire fen. Not that fells and fens will be targeted; they are too far from the southeast, where uncontrolled development or “regeneration” will achieve a level of overcrowding and overheating yet unseen because, for the past seven decades, statutory regulations have struggled to prevent it.

This government of all talents will one day no longer be with us, reduced mercifully to dust. But its squalid legacy will remain. Not simply in boorish schemes and mediocre designs, but in ruined lives, in the RAF favelas, Brit bivouacs and bidonvilles that will grow up to accommodate the disenfranchised and unsheltered who can seldom reach even the first rung of the “housing ladder” — the very epithet reeks of the expectation of entitlement. They may have been born in Blyth and made in the Royal Navy and served their country selflessly, but the nearest they’ll get as veterans to that ladder is a sleeping bag beside a hot-air vent.

And, supposing they do grapple with it, they will very likely be looking at a windowless “home” of 20 square metres, which is about two-thirds the size prescribed by the Parker Morris committee nearly 60 years ago and adopted by both main parties in an era when not to build social housing was unthinkable. There existed a cross-party consensus favouring a sort of nationalised noblesse oblige. That consensus was destroyed by Margaret Thatcher. It was in the long term the most divisive of her many divisive acts. The right to buy was the right to buy votes and steal someone else’s hope.

It also signalled the capitulation of environmental dirigisme to the god of the market. The UK’s rules were both stricter and more rigorously applied than those of the southern European countries it now seeks to emulate. They were also applied in a different manner.

Because, for many decades from the 1860s onwards, the wealth in English (though not Scottish) cities tended to live outside those then reeking cities, they had no particular investment in them domestically. With the decline of heavy industry in town centres and the gradual gentrification of London from the 1960s onwards and, later, of the main English cities, things changed. Those cities became centripetal in the way that Paris and Madrid are. Class clearance freed up space for celebrity baristas and lifestyle-size influencers.

Laissez-faire planning was the sole form of planning, bridge fetishes excepted, that appealed to the former mayor of London. If a volume builder wants to do it, let it be — build away the blues: that evidently was the mayoral mantra. The volume builder knows his stuff and he is a very great contributor, a valued donor. Laissez-faire planning — you might call it no planning or sloth planning — is this government of talents’ speciality and is to be non-applied to everything, everywhere.

And what London thinks today, Manchester thinks tomorrow. Save that it won’t work like that. Giving free rein to volume builders is a route to uglification on the most astounding scale. These people are the barrow boys of the built environment. They are enemies of architecture. Indeed, they seldom employ architects: do they get treated by amateur dentists and Sunday oncologists? All that matters is the bottom line. The little people who will subsist in the valued donors’ creations don’t count. Indeed, they would do well to get littler still, to fit into their undesigned crates and hutches.

Jonathan Meades has written and performed in more than 50 television programmes on urbanism, architecture and topography. His next book, Pedro and Ricky Come Again, will be published next spring

Nimbys may have lost the battle of the back yard
When Nimby, an American acronym for “not in my back yard”, entered the British lexicon it quickly became shorthand for the tensions between selfishness and the public good, writes Nicholas Hellen.

Margaret Thatcher’s environment secretary, Nicholas Ridley, declared his support for a swathe of new towns: “Our English countryside is one of the most heavily manmade habitats in Europe. To make it into a green museum would be to belie its whole history.”

It swiftly emerged that he had objected to new homes near his Cotswolds rectory and was a Nimby too.

Now as Robert Jenrick, the housing minister, takes charge of Boris Johnson’s pledge to “Build, build, build”, Nimbys are once again in the crosshairs.

In the 30 or so years since, the population of the UK has grown by more than 10 million to 67.9 million.

This time round, the battles will not be confined to fields, hedgerows and herbaceous borders. Nor will Nimby remain code largely for white middle-aged Tory voters keen to preserve property values and to exclude people different from themselves.

Under Jenrick’s proposed planning reforms, land across England will be divided into three categories. New homes, schools, shops and offices would be automatically permitted in “growth” areas, and in urban and brownfield sites, known as “renewal” zones, plans would be given “permission in principle”.

The most affluent areas, often Tory-controlled, will be ordered to release the most land for housing, and local control over the rate of building will in effect be removed. Disused commercial premises can be turned into homes without the need for planning permission, creating fears that empty shops will become the slums of tomorrow.

New alliances are being created. Rich developers may pose as friends of the homeless, while wealthy homeowners make common cause with environmentalists. In the era of identity politics, we are all Nimbys now.

With the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, the Attlee government nationalised development rights. That is, whatever benefits that might come from developing land belong in principle to the public. When planning permission is granted, a portion of those rights is transferred to a landowner.

This gives government a lever that can be used for the public good. A vast quantity of latent wealth comes from the fact that planning consent can increase the value of land – according to one study, by a stupendous 275 times. The most realistic way of funding the genuinely affordable housing that this country needs is from sharing this windfall.

Last week, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published a white paper, Planning for the Future, which promises, in the prime minister’s words, to “tear down” the system created by the 1947 act and “start again”. The crucial question is whether it will, as the government promises, end the generational divide between housing haves and have-nots.

Its most eye-catching proposal (for England only, as planning is devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), is to designate three types of land, labelled “Growth”, “Renewal” and “Protected”. These would be specified in the plans drawn up by local authorities. Where land is designated for “growth”, outline permission would be automatically granted for development of the type set out in the plan.

This would reduce the public debate and scrutiny that currently come with planning applications and focus on the drawing up of local plans, which is currently a slow, sometimes opaque process. The white paper promises to make the preparation of these plans both faster and more open to public consultation, at the same time as their significance is greatly increased.

The proposals include a “fast track to beauty”, whereby local authorities, with some direction from national government, produce design guides that translate the “basic characteristics of good places into what works locally”. Applications that conform to these guides would be speeded through the planning process. Digital technology would make planning more accessible to the public, basing it on “data” rather than “documents”.

Perhaps most importantly, section 106 agreements, which are negotiated between planning authorities and developers and are the main vehicle for obtaining affordable housing and other public benefits, would be replaced by an enhanced community infrastructure levy (CIL), a cash sum that would be fixed according to national rules. Viability assessments, whereby developers can plead for reductions in their obligations in order to make their schemes stack up, would be abolished.

The idea of these changes, says the government, is to speed up the planning process by slashing red tape. Much of the current system relies on opinion and interpretation, which adds uncertainty, risk and complexity. A clearer, more rules-based system would benefit smaller building businesses, currently squeezed out by the construction giants.

The communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, promises that these proposals will help “recreate an ownership society in which more people have a dignity and security of a home of their own”, where “all pay a fair share of the costs of infrastructure and the affordable housing existing communities require and where permissions are more swiftly turned into homes”.

Looked at neutrally, some of these aims seem valid. If local plans are truly to be exposed to fuller public debate, that would be a good thing. The discretionary nature of the planning system is indeed wasteful, does not always lead to the best possible results and tends to favour those with the resources to shout most and argue hardest. The abolition of viability assessments would be positive. In theory, the improved CIL could be the lever by which those still-nationalised development rights could benefit the public.

But Jenrick saved the Tory donor Richard Desmond millions of pounds in CIL by overriding a planning decision made by the London borough of Tower Hamlets. This episode doesn’t give confidence that Jenrick is the best man to preside over a more equitable CIL, nor that the Conservative party is not primarily driven by its property business supporters.

The white paper also assumes a high degree of administrative competency, for which this government has not so far been notable. The new super-powered local plans will require resources and organisation that are not yet in evidence. The design codes will have to address those tricky issues that really make places successful, such as layout, density, construction quality and mixtures of uses and tenure.

It is possible to see how council estates could be designated as areas for “growth” and therefore vulnerable to comprehensive redevelopment. The CIL proposals come with exceptions that could easily be used to erode their effectiveness. The promise of more equal housing would therefore fade away.

It is a persistent Tory fantasy that deregulation of planning will, through the operation of supply and demand, reduce prices. It does not and will not: volume housebuilders slow down their rate of building if the price is in danger of falling. The European countries with more balanced and successful housing markets than ours, such as Germany and the Netherlands, have more proactive national and local governments, which do such things as assemble land and initiate building. Even if this white paper works, which is doubtful, it will take a lot more to address the housing crisis.

Boris Johnson’s Mistress Jennifer Arcuri is coming back to live in England in 2020. She will be appearing on Channel Four’s Celebrity Hunted programme no doubt to tease the nation will a kiss and tell on Johnson’s peccadillos. She promised a tell all book on her time with Boris Johnson from 2011 to 2016 but instead delivers a book on Hacking.

American Arcuri is a self promoting actress and a hackivist, no bimbo but highly intelligent who shared Johnson’s Secrets during the crucial period of Russian Influence in the run up to the 2016 Brexit Referendum. ……..

Young people in Preston have been warned “don’t kill granny” by the city’s council as local lockdown measures were enforced following a spike in coronavirus cases.

Households in the city in Lancashire are now banned from mixing indoors or in gardens, with local leaders blaming people mixing in pubs and other homes for restrictions having to be reimposed.

Adrian Phillips, chief executive of Preston City Council, said “young people are inevitably among the brave and the bold”, but claimed they are spreading COVID-19 in the community in “many cases”

“I know our director of public health has said ‘don’t kill granny’ to young people to try and focus the message,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme.

“Young people are inevitably among the brave and the bold, they want to be adventurous and out and about, but we know that they have the virus… they often have less symptoms, but they do take it back to their household and the community spread we are seeing, we believe in many cases (is) young people taking it home and catching the virus.”

Mr Phillips backed a call from the Local Government Association (LGA) for councils to have greater powers to close pubs to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Current guidance says licensed premises should take customer details and ensure they have infection control measures in place, but they are still voluntary.

The LGA wants these guidelines to be made mandatory immediately, and has called for local authorities to be given stronger powers to enforce them.

It wants a temporary COVID-19 objective added to the Licensing Act, allowing councils to shut premises that fail to collect contact tracing data or enforce social distancing, or even revoke their licences.

“You need responsive powers,” Mr Phillips said.

“It is useful to have something that can move quickly and we can make it entirely clear to the licensee or the operator what the consequences are.”

The new restrictions in Preston that came into place from midnight are:

• You cannot have others in your homes and gardens
• You cannot visit other people’s homes or gardens, even if they are in an unaffected area
• You are not permitted to mix with other household in indoor venues

Social bubbles are exempt from the restrictions.

Residents can meet in groups of up to six, or more than six if exclusively from two households, in outdoor areas such as parks and beer gardens.

Households can also visit indoor hospitality venues as long as they do not mix with others.

Sixty-one new coronavirus cases were reported in Preston in the seven days to August 4, which is the equivalent of 42.6 cases per 100,000 people – up from 21.7 per 100,000 in the previous seven days.

Director of Public Health for Lancashire Sakthi Karunanithi said almost half of the cases reported were among people aged 30 and younger.

Mr Karunanithi said the “two main reasons” for the rise in infections were people meeting others in their houses and households coming together in venues such as pubs.

He added: “These two are key behaviours we’re trying to protect people from. Don’t meet with members of other households in pubs and clubs.”

The new restrictions in Preston come a week after the same measures were brought in for residents in Greater Manchester, parts of east Lancashire and West Yorkshire, as well as Leicester.

The rules will remain in place for those areas for at least another week.

Bedford and Swindon have also been added to the government’s “watchlist” of places where cases are rising.

Meanwhile, from today face coverings are now mandatory across England in indoor places of worship, museums and galleries, public areas in hotels and hostels, bingo halls, libraries, cinemas, concert halls, crematoriums, aquariums and indoor zoos.